Wrap around care refers to the process of out of school clubs that form part of the governments extended school agenda.
This includes breakfast clubs, after school clubs and holiday clubs. Wraparound and holiday childcare can either be on a school’s site (run in-house by the school or in partnership with a provider) or at a nearby school or provider.
Wrap around care is designed to help parents balance work and family commitments, whilst providing children with study support and offering them a broader range of interests and experiences.
The government has also announced that it will provide £10 million funding a year to expand breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools starting from September 2017, to ensure that more children have a nutritious breakfast as a healthy start to their school day.
Schools must also ensure that the wraparound or holiday childcare providers fully recognise their responsibility to have arrangements in place to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
Benefits
The benefits of our wrap around care is that it allows parents to know that their children are in a safe environment, doing fun activities with our fully qualified sports staff. Good quality wraparound childcare has a positive impact on children’s academic performance, social skills and behavioural skills. Research shows that children who attended after school clubs fared better than those who did not attend, and on average achieved a 2 point higher score in their KS2 assessments in English, maths and science.
Parents ‘Right to Request’
Parents can request wrap around care for their child, but this only refers to the school that their child attends. Schools should inform parents of their right to request, which will then be collected and will consider these requests. Schools will then make a decision, and must inform parents of this. Governing bodies will want to ensure that any provision is consistent with the school’s long-term strategic vision.
Many schools already offer a school day that includes additional activity, such as extra academic tuition or coaching in sports and the arts. Wraparound childcare should complement and not detract from these extra-curricular activities or additional academic support that schools offer as part of their school day.
Schools should be clear about what information they require from parents in order to make a decision. This could include:
• the type of childcare requested;
• age range of the children requiring wraparound or holiday childcare; and
• when provision is most needed;
Parents’ requests should be written (by letter or email or via school-run parent surveys) and dated, so that the school can log requests and keep a record. Schools inform parents how the requests will be collected
Schools should inform parents about the outcome of the process in a timely fashion. This should be no longer than eight weeks from the time that they count the number of requests from parents. Schools will need to analyse parents’ requests, determine whether the care requested is a viable proposition for the school, discuss with their local authority and consult their governing body, the reasons for the decision taken, and any next steps.
Options that schools may want to consider include:
If the school decides to go ahead with the provision of wraparound and holiday childcare, there are a number of possible models of delivery. Each school will need to decide which is the best route for them and the community they serve.
- In-house - this model will be attractive to schools wishing to retain control of all aspects of their childcare provision,
- Blended - this model will be attractive to schools wishing to retain control of some aspects of their childcare provision, while also working in partnership with their local community. Examples of blended provision include commissioning a third party provider to run some of the provision (such as the Duke of Edinburgh scheme), partnerships with other local schools, or managing some provision in-house but having some activities run by an external agency.
- External - this model will be attractive to schools that, for various reasons, that wish to hand over responsibility for running their childcare provision to another organisation (or to a consortia of providers, including childminders).
Active Superstars
Whilst some schools provide their own wrap around care, others chose to out-source the provision. Active Superstars can provide wrap around care for your school and your children, by offering extra care with the wellbeing of your child being the paramount importance.
Our aim when providing wrap around care is to give your children new opportunities to grow. We also want to help parents with their childcare plans, both before and after the school day and during the school holidays.
Active Superstars offer high quality sports activities to keep children active, and to introduce them to healthy habits. For more information on having Active Superstars providing your schools wrap around care call Active Superstars today on 0121 222 5464 or email info@activesuperstars.co.uk
